The invention relates to stamps, such as postage stamps, and also to methods, systems and machines for tracking the usage of such stamps.
Stamps provide a common vehicle used in the collection of payment for the delivery of deliverable items. For example, postage stamps are used to pay for postal delivery service of mail items. While the value of a given conventional postage stamp can easily be determined from a visual inspection, current systems for processing mail are incapable of automatically determining whether the proper amount of postage has been applied with the result that postal administrations are incapable of identifying mail pieces with short paid postage in an automated processing stream. Additional problems with conventional stamps include the re-use of cancelled postage stamps, the use of postage stamps which have been stolen, the use of postage stamps which have been chemically washed to remove cancellation marks, and the use of postage stamps which have been fraudulently manufactured. The above mis-uses of postage stamps cost postal administrations millions of dollars annually in lost revenue.
Various proposals have been made for dealing with this problem. Colour imaging of postage stamps and the analysis of colours and patterns has been proposed for the identification of specific postage stamps and the calculation of short paid postage. This methodology is very expensive due to the requirement for a colour camera on mail processing machines. It is also unreliable due to the complexity of the individual patterns which must be recognized. Furthermore, only a limited number of patterns can be stored and accessed during real time processing,
The use of connotative inks in postage stamp manufacture and postage stamp cancellation has been investigated as a means to permanently alter the colour of a postage stamp after cancellation to eliminate the potential for washing and re-using a postage stamp. However, connotative inks are expensive and the manufacture of stamps in this manner is more difficult.
No methods have been developed for the detection and isolation of stolen postage stamps. The detection of counterfeit stamps is dependant on the visual examination of the postage stamps"" paper, perforations, colour and fluorescence. Visual detection is inefficient and ineffective as only a small sample can be examined.
Metered marks are also subject to fraud. To reduce this fraud and to provide a convenient alternative to postage stamps for small office/home office mailers, the United States Postal Service has developed a methodology for PC postage. For PC postage, the United States Postal Service is investigating the use of the PDF 417 bar code for application to the exterior of envelopes by the printer of the envelopes. A chip or on-line Internet account is debited each time the bar code indicia is printed. Unfortunately, the PDF 417 bar code has very low efficiency in terms of data content per unit area. This is despite the fact that the smallest element in the PDF 417 bar code is very small, in fact smaller than that readable by today""s postal Industry optical character recognition (OCR) packages included in many existing mail processing machines which have 200 dpi resolution. This means that hand-held scanners are required to read the PDF 417 bar code. Furthermore, the PDF 417 bar codes are large and are not aesthetically pleasing. The systems employed to monitor PC postage usage through these bar codes takes over a day to perform verification and as such cannot be used in real time.
At meetings of the Universal Postal Union Technical standards Board, the United States Postal Service discussed their information-based indicia program based on the use of the PDF 417 bar code symbology as a replacement for a meter impression, and Canada Post proposed the use of Data Matrix or Aztec code symbologies for this purpose. Mechanisms for using such bar codes to verify postage or detect fraud in real time have yet to be proposed.
While it has been proposed to include unique identifiers on PC postage, there have never been postage stamps which include any sort of unique identifier. Furthermore, there are not any existing systems capable of identifying mail pieces which are short paid, or postage stamps which have been stolen or reused.
It is an object of the invention to obviate or mitigate one or more of the above identified disadvantages.
According to a first broad aspect, the invention provides a postage stamp comprising a first area containing postage stamp artwork; and a second area containing an identifier bar code for the stamp.
According to a second broad aspect, the invention provides a deliverable item processing apparatus for processing a deliverable item having destination information and one or more identifier bar codes each containing a value, the apparatus comprising an image capture device for taking one or more images of the deliverable item which include at least the identifier bar codes and the destination information; a processing and control block for processing the images so as to determine the destination information and the values contained in the identifier bar codes, for accumulating a total of the values contained in the identifier bar codes applied to the deliverable item, for determining a required value for the deliverable item on the basis of the destination information, and for determining if the total is as great as the required value.
According to a third broad aspect, the invention provides a deliverable item processing apparatus for processing a deliverable item having destination information and one or more two-dimensional unique identifier bar codes each representing a unique identifier, the apparatus comprising an image capture device for taking one or more images of the deliverable item which include at least the unique identifier bar codes and the destination information; an identification tag printer for applying a unique identification tag to each deliverable item processed by the deliverable item processing apparatus; a processing and control system for processing the images so as to determine a destination identifier from the destination information and from the unique identifier bar codes the unique identifiers, and for creating a record for each unique identifier bar code containing the unique identifier, the identification tag and the destination identifier.
According to a fourth broad aspect, the invention provides a deliverable item processing apparatus for processing a deliverable item having an identification tag, the apparatus comprising an identification tag capture device for reading the identification tag; a processing and control block for maintaining a list of identification tags on the basis of an input received from a remote source, for comparing the identification tag with the list of identification tags, and if there is a match, diverting the deliverable item for special processing.
According to a fifth broad aspect, the invention provides a method of controlling data for use by deliverable item processing apparatuses, the method comprising storing a plurality of records each having fields for an identification tag and a unique identifier; receiving from one of said deliverable item processing apparatuses a destination identifier, a received identification tag of a deliverable item which has been processed by said deliverable item processing apparatus and a received unique identifier; looking up the record containing the received unique identifier; if there is no stored identification tag in the record, adding the received identification tag to the record; if there is a stored identification tag in the record, comparing the stored identification tag to the received identification tag; if there is no record for the unique identifier, or if there is a mismatch between the stored identification tag and the received identification tag, sending the received identification tag to a destination identified by the destination identifier.
According to a sixth broad aspect, the invention provides a deliverable item processing apparatus for processing a deliverable item having one or more stamps with unique identifier bar codes each containing a unique identifier, the apparatus comprising memory for storing a list of unique identifiers for stamps which have been identified as stolen; an image capture device for taking one or more images of the deliverable item which include at least the unique identifier bar codes; a processing and control block for determining from the unique identifier bar codes in the images the unique identifiers of the stamps, and for comparing these to the stored unique identifiers, and if there is a match, diverting the deliverable item for special processing.